The owners of Leicester City have confirmed that they intend to follow up on their dismissal of manager Sven-Goran Eriksson by vainly chasing Martin O’Neill before eventually appointing some high-profile disaster-in-waiting or other in roughly a month’s time.
Eriksson, an Aquarius, was relieved of his duties after Saturday’s humiliating 3-0 defeat to Millwall at the King Power Stadium, the latest in a series of disappointing home reversals to be explained away by excuses involving the words ‘gel’ and ‘tired’.
While O’Neill is unlikely to risk tarnishing a legacy which saw him twice win the League Cup during his spell as Foxes boss between 1995 and 2000, the club’s Thai owners insist that they have little option but to let him string them along for a few weeks before ruling himself out at the last minute, paving the way for someone like Alan Shearer or Roy Keane to arrive just in time to spunk millions of pounds away during the January transfer window.
Vice-chairman Aiyawatt Raksriaksorn said: “We have been in touch with Martin and he was more than happy to confirm his availability for a protracted cat-and-mouse chase that will have us all over the newspapers like some particularly tedious rash for the next month or so.
“Of course, we fully intend for our eventual appointment to be of the eminent disaster-in-waiting variety, but there’s no harm in letting our academy staff get a run of defeats together before shoving them out the way again to make room for, I don’t know, let’s say Steve McClaren.
“Then again, there’s always the possibility that Jon Rudkin and Mike Stowell end up wringing seven months’ worth of good performances out of the lads through sheer goodwill, in which case we shall give them our full support until things start to go a little bit pear-shaped in roughly a year’s time, upon which we shall not hesitate to sack them, replace them with some vacuous fanfare appointment and begin the whole sorry charade all over again.
“Let it not be said that we haven’t learned how football works in this dreary little country of yours.”
Meanwhile, Eriksson has announced that he is still undecided as to how best to fritter away his latest lucrative payoff.
He said: “I might get a yacht, in case something happens to the one I’ve got now. Or I might use it to have Jermaine Beckford surgically transformed into some kind of lobster creature.”
He added: “The s**t t**t.”